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Monthly bookkeeping run entirely in Xero — closed, reviewed and proven every period by the team that does the work.
Bookkeeping packages
The confusion
Why the Words Blur
In a small business the three roles are often one person, so the words collapse into each other. They separate as the business grows, and by then the habit is set.
There is a second reason. None of the three titles is protected in the way that CPA is. Anyone can call themselves a bookkeeper, an accountant or a controller. Only a CPA licence requires an exam, an education requirement, an experience requirement and a state board.
So when you are comparing people, the title tells you what they intend to do rather than what they are qualified to do. What matters is the work, and the work divides cleanly.
Role one
The Bookkeeper: the Record
A bookkeeper makes the file true. Everything that happened, recorded correctly, in the period it happened, agreed to an external source.
- Transactions coded and reconciled. Every bank and card account agreed to a statement, not to an empty reconcile queue. Those are different things.
- Bills and invoices recorded. What you owe and what you are owed, current at any point in the month rather than assembled at the end of it.
- The month closed. Accruals and prepayments posted, control accounts agreed, the period locked, statements produced.
- Records your accountant can use. So what they charge for at year end is tax work rather than reconstruction.
The output is a general ledger you can rely on. Nothing further up the chain works without it. An accountant handed an unreconciled file spends their time rebuilding rather than advising, and a controller reviewing numbers that do not agree with the bank is reviewing fiction.
What a bookkeeper does not do: file your tax return, run payroll, sign an opinion on your accounts, or tell you whether to take the loan. Those belong to the next two roles and to a licensed firm.
Role two
The Accountant: the Interpretation and the Filing
An accountant takes a finished record and does something with it. Two things, mostly: satisfies an external requirement, and tells you what the numbers mean.
The compliance half
Federal and state tax returns, elections, depreciation treatment, entity structure questions, and the correspondence when a tax authority asks something. This is where a CPA licence matters, because representing you before the IRS and signing certain filings requires one.
The advisory half
Whether to be an S corporation, how to structure owner compensation, what a purchase does to your tax position, how to plan for a liability before it arrives rather than after. Judgment applied to a specific situation.
Most small businesses meet their accountant once or twice a year, which is a reasonable rhythm for compliance and a poor one for anything else. That gap is the reason so many owners feel they have an accountant and still cannot answer a question about their own business in March.
The expensive misunderstanding
A large share of what a business pays an accountant at year end is not tax work. It is bookkeeping, done late, at accountant rates, by someone reconstructing twelve months from bank statements. If your year-end bill surprises you, this is usually why.
Role three
The Controller: the Control
A controller owns the accounting function itself. Not the entries, and not the tax return. The system that produces both, and whether it can be trusted.
- Process and controls. Who approves what, at which threshold, and who cannot also be the person who records it. Separation of duties in practice rather than on paper.
- Close management. The month closing to a deadline, every month, with the same result whoever runs it.
- Review rather than preparation. A controller checks the balance sheet is substantiated, the margins make sense, and the variances have explanations. They are looking for what is wrong, not producing what is right.
- Reporting for people outside the business. A board, a lender, an investor. Numbers that will be questioned by someone with no reason to be generous.
- Policy. Revenue recognition, capitalisation thresholds, how intercompany is handled. The decisions that make this year comparable to last year.
A controller is the first role that is about the function rather than the output. That is why the trigger for hiring one is rarely volume. It is when the numbers start being used by people who can say no.
Side by side
The Three, Compared
| Bookkeeper | Accountant | Controller | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answers | What happened? | What does it mean, and what do we owe? | Can we trust how we know? |
| Works on | Transactions and the close | Returns, elections, planning | The process that produces the numbers |
| Rhythm | Continuous, closing monthly | Quarterly and annual | Monthly review, continuous oversight |
| Licence | None required | CPA required for some filings and IRS representation | None required, often a CPA or equivalent background |
| Fails when | The file stops agreeing with the bank | They are handed a file that needs rebuilding first | There is no reliable ledger underneath to control |
| Typical trigger | You started a business | You have a filing obligation | Someone outside the business reads your numbers |
Read the bottom row first. It explains the order most businesses hire in, and why skipping ahead usually fails.
The signals
When You Outgrow Each
You have outgrown doing it yourself when
- The books are done at night, after a full day, and they are the thing that slips when you are busy
- You cannot answer what you are owed and what you owe without opening three things
- Your year-end bill includes work you assumed was bookkeeping
You have outgrown an annual accountant when
- You are making decisions on numbers you last saw in a meeting nine months ago
- A tax bill arrives that nobody warned you about
- You want to know whether last month was good, and nobody knows yet
You need a controller when
- A second person can commit money, and no one reviews what the first person recorded
- A lender, board or investor reads your accounts and asks questions you cannot answer from the file
- You run more than one entity and the intercompany balances do not clear
- Your close takes three weeks and the reason is that nobody owns the sequence
The controller signals are about oversight, not size. A ten-person business with a lender covenant needs that oversight more than a forty-person business that answers to nobody.
Hiring
The Order to Hire In
Almost every business gets this in the same order, and the ones that skip a step end up paying for it twice.
First
Bookkeeping, monthly
Before anything else, because everything else reads from it. The cheapest of the three and the one that makes the other two cost less.
Alongside it
A CPA for tax
Separate from bookkeeping, and better for being separate. A CPA working from a reconciled file spends their time on your tax position rather than on your bank statements.
When the trigger arrives
Controller oversight
Usually fractional first, often the month a lender or investor starts reading the accounts. Full-time when the function is large enough to need managing daily.
The expensive version of this mistake
Hiring a controller or a fractional CFO onto an unreconciled ledger. They spend their first months rebuilding the bookkeeping, at several times bookkeeping rates, and the strategic work you hired them for starts a quarter late.
Where we sit
Logiframe is the first of the three. We keep the books current, reconciled and substantiated, close the month to a deadline, and hand your CPA a file that does not need fixing. We do not prepare or file tax returns, we do not run payroll, and we do not do audit, attestation or CFO advisory. Where you need those, we will say so and work alongside whoever provides them.
Questions
Commonly Asked
What is the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant?
A bookkeeper records what happened and closes the month, producing a ledger that agrees with your bank and your subledgers. An accountant works from that record to meet filing obligations and to advise. The practical difference is rhythm and purpose: bookkeeping is continuous and produces the data, accounting is periodic and interprets it. Neither title is legally protected, though a CPA licence is required for certain filings and for representing you before the IRS.
Do I need a bookkeeper if I already have an accountant?
Usually yes, and it normally costs less overall. Most accountants are engaged for tax work, not for keeping your books current through the year. Without a bookkeeper, the reconciliation happens at year end, done by the accountant, at their rate. A reconciled file also means the return is built from accurate numbers rather than from reconstruction.
What does a controller do that a bookkeeper does not?
A controller owns the accounting function rather than the entries. They set who approves what, ensure the person recording a transaction is not the person approving it, review rather than prepare, manage the close to a deadline, and set the policies that make each period comparable. A bookkeeper produces the numbers; a controller is accountable for whether the process producing them can be trusted.
When should a small business hire a controller?
When the numbers start being read by someone outside the business who can say no, or when more than one person can commit money without independent review. Both are questions of oversight rather than size. A fractional controller usually comes first, because the need is for judgment a few days a month rather than a full-time role.
Can one person do all three?
In a very small business, yes, and most owners start that way. It stops working for a structural reason rather than a competence one: the same person recording, approving and reviewing removes the control that makes the numbers trustworthy. That is why the roles separate as a business grows, and why separation of duties is the first thing a lender or auditor looks for.
Is a CPA the same as an accountant?
Every CPA is an accountant; not every accountant is a CPA. The licence requires an exam, education and experience requirements, and state board registration, and it is needed to sign certain filings, issue audit or review opinions, and represent a client before the IRS. For bookkeeping and management reporting, it is not required.